The Ultimate Self Made Man
by The Dream Whisperer
Summary: “The first memory Hibari had was of blood splashed across a face in glass, and the slow realization that the face was his own.” An attempt to explain Hibari’s backstory.


**The Ultimate Self-Made Man – 21 Facts on Hibari Kyouya   
**

**Character: **Hibari Kyouya**  
Rating: **PG-13**  
Words: **2110  
**Summary:** "The first memory Hibari had was of blood splashed across a face in glass, and the slow realization that the face was his own." An attempt to explain Hibari's backstory.

1.

The first memory Hibari had was of blood splashed across a face in glass, and the slow realization that the face was his own. A moment later, he found the taste to be far more pleasant than anything else he had been fed so far.

2.

At the age of seven, Hibari slipped through the guards and ran away from the Institute that may or may not have made him. He took the left fork at a crossroad and was captured a week later, hiding in an abandoned warehouse. (In another world, he took the right fork and bumped into an old man whom he found out later to be the Ninth Boss of the Vongola. But that is another story for another time.)

When he was returned to the facility, they tied him down and pressed alien things into him, surrounding him with tubes and wires and machines and endless floods of people in white and green and silver, cutting into him and trying to make him bow to their will. Their voices flooded his head, ideas trying to crush his will, but he _persisted_ and he _fought_ because that was simply who he was. The harder they tried to crush him, the stronger he became.

What does not kill you made you stronger.

3.

He named himself "Hibari" for the skylark that flew past his window one day. He decided that he would become that skylark, forever free without anything to tie him down to the earth. "Kyouya" was what they called him – the kanji he chose himself. It did not reflect upon his own attitude towards the world, but the world's upon him.

4.

Three years after his first attempted escape, the facility was burned down by an organization horrified by what happened there. Hibari dodged the grasps of his so-called rescuers and ran as far and as fast as he could. He only stopped when his legs refused to carry him further and sent him crashing to the floor, in front of Namimori Middle School.

5.

Namimori was the first thing that he ever had; the first thing that _belonged_ to him. The very moment he laid eyes on it, he decided that it was _his_, and made preparations to make everyone else in the area recognize that fact.

Even a skylark needed a nest to return to at times.

6.

Quite contrary to the name that he had chosen for himself, Hibari saw himself to be a predator. On his third day in Namimori, he saw a wildcat rip the throat of a dog many times its size out. He smiled, showing teeth, and decided that he would 'bite to death' anyone would tried to get in his way as well.

7.

Hibari picked up his first pair of tonfas from the back of a weapon store. They were rusty and creaked as he shifted them in his grasp, but the handles fitted his small hands and the weight was comfortable – that was all that mattered.

They made a suitable sound when he slammed them against his first opponent's face – a _crack_ and a _crunch_ and he was entranced by the sight of blood on silver.

8.

Hibari built up his reputation slowly. First he went after thieves and small-time crooks, using his new pair of tonfas to beat them black and blue and bloody. It wasn't for justice or to protect Namimori – it was simply that these crooks wouldn't be able to report him to the police, and they usually had quite a lot of money on them. When he tired of small-time prey, he went after the bigger fishes: the street gangs, the minor yakuza. All of them bowed under his power.

Namimori's streets had never been safer or more dangerous. His name was being whispered along the shadows of the alleys, spoken in tones of fear and awe and incredulity. Hibari simply smiled.

They had finally started to recognize that Namimori belonged to him.

9.

Anyone who desecrated his property in any form would be 'bitten to death'. Those who infringed into _his_ town and decided to make a ruckus during spring for the sake of 'festivals' or what not would have to pay him rent, and reparations for disturbing the peace.

It was simply logical.

10.

Hibari did not forget about Namimori Middle School – far from it. When he had procured an apartment for his own use (mostly just to fill in the 'address' portion of the school admittance form, because he rarely used it), and bought his first uniform, he enrolled himself in the school one day without informing anyone. He picked a classroom that looked out to the sakura tree on the grounds, and seated himself on the window seat.

When the then-President of the Discipline Committee tried to chase him out of the school, Hibari broke his nose, arm, and leg with his bare hands. Then he took the red badge (_authority_ – to make the herbivores recognize his power easily) and pinned it to his own sleeve.

He promoted himself to third year so as to fulfil the condition that the Chairman of a club needed to be a third year – the administration was disappointingly easy to intimidate.

11.

Hibari was the only person in the entire history of Namimori Middle School to repeat third year twice.

His name was imprinted in everyone's mind but had never appeared in any class namelist. He did not care.

12.

The first time Hibari got a cold, he decided that he should make his power known in the hospital as well.

From then on, the hospital had belonged to him.

13.

To Hibari, soft emotions like _affection _and _friendship_ were what made herbivores so weak and caused them to herd mindlessly. It was what dragged them down, clipped their claws and talons and _tamed_ them. It made them so terribly _dependent_ on other herbivores, so much that they never pushed themselves because they believed that others would be there to catch them if they fell.

Love, of course, was the worst off them all. It made herbivores even more prone to crowding and making needless _noise_ than all other emotions. It disturbs his school's peace; created chaos where there used to be order. The very mention of the word made him want to shove a tonfa down the unfortunate herbivore's throat.

What Hibari understood were things like _pride_ and _shame_ and _anger_. Those came to him as naturally as battle; as breathing. He had pride in his school, in his town, because they were _his_. Mukuro made a fool of him, showed him the weaknesses in his abilities, and thus he felt shame. For the same reasons, he was furious – at Mukuro for desecrating his property and _cheating_, at himself for being not-strong-enough.

These, he understood, for they were simply natural; the logical way things worked. What would prompt herbivores to develop _affection_, he could not understand.

14.

Hibari hated Mukuro because he was everything that Hibari could have become, if he had just let go of his persistence and will for a moment. Hibari detested Mukuro because despite the man's fighting strength, he was weak, so weak, almost worse than an herbivore.

Madness, like death, was simply a _weakness of the will_.

That is why Hibari is the strongest, and will always remain the strongest. He will allow himself nothing less.

15.

If there was anything that Hibari respected the Italians for, it was Machiavelli's _The Prince_.

"The ends justify the means", "It is better to be feared and respected than loved" – rules that Hibari believed in and lived by.

He ruled Namimori with an iron fist, clamping down on those who dared to disturb or trespass his property. Crime rates fell to an all-time low, because everyone feared retribution in the form of silver tonfa breaking their bones and teeth and bodies. They feared him, respected him, and spoke of him in awe. He was not loved, far from it, and that was fine with him, because that was never his objective.

16.

Dino Cavallone was, in a word, 'confusing'.

He was plainly a predator just like Hibari himself – his whip and his skill with it showed that much. Yet at the same time he surrounded himself with weak herbivores at any opportunity available, even to the point of getting himself injured trying to protect them. He was even _dependent_ on them – Hibari had seen the Cavallone without his men, and he was a pathetic sight, nothing more than a herbivore and definitely not the man he had grudgingly came to acknowledge as his 'tutor'.

If, Hibari had once thought during a lull in battle, a man like the Cavallone could _need_ his subordinates so much and yet be strong enough to defeat Hibari himself... what did it mean, then? He did not understand, for this was not the natural progression of things. It did not follow the neatly structured rules of Hibari's world - Cavallone, in general, did not follow Hibari's rules. He strolled languidly into Hibari's life and declared himself Hibari's teacher, and turned every single one of Hibari's rules upside-down.

The only possible conclusion that Hibari could come to was to defeat the Cavallone, so his world would be tilted back to its axis again. That, however, had not happened.

And so Hibari had to get used to a slightly slanted world that had rules that were more complicated than they had been when he was ten years old. He refused to be daunted however, and _adapted_, like a predator did.

Sometimes he wondered why he had lost the urge to bite Dino Cavallone to death.

17.

Hibari did not fight to satisfy his blood-thirst.

He did not fight meaningless battles – there was always a reason for him to raise the tonfas to strike, whether it was that the delinquents needed a reminder of Namimori's school rules (_his _laws), or so he could get stronger, or because he found someone interesting enough, or... the reasons were plenty.

There was _always_ a reason.

But sometimes the reason came after the fight, and Hibari sometimes could not deny to himself that it was simply an excuse to bloody his tonfas with his opponent's blood. It was something of a consuming _need_ within him, the need for battle, for the rush of adrenalin in his blood, for cut and wound and to be cut and wounded. It was only in battle, after all, that he felt awake; _alive_.

Perhaps it was something programmed into him, a binary code that compelled him to fight and keep fighting. But that would be simplifying things, and Hibari simply wasn't the sort to let such things control him, in any case.

He enjoyed fighting – that was enough of a reason for him to keep on doing it.

18.

Peace came to Hibari in the forms of a perfectly made cup of tea, or in pieces of sushi that was not too strong nor too bland in taste, with fish that melted in his mouth. Peace came to him in the shadows of the fluttering of his own sleeve as he went through the ritual of tea ceremony; and the glint of approval in his own eyes when Kusakabe finally managed to make tea the way Hibari preferred. It was there in the ways the sakura floated down to the ground.

More recently, peace settled him like a warm blanket when the bird (not his, for birds were free and unchained, and a free spirit did not believe in chaining another to him) trilled out the school song and settled itself in his hair. It hung on the edges of his vision during meditation, when his mind was cleared like the sun breaking through clouds in the rain; during the few moments when he managed to find a well-written novel and traced his fingers over the strokes of printed kanji.

Contentment usually followed, and sometimes Hibari wondered if this was the so-called happiness that the herbivores so crowed about.

He smiled, nonetheless.

19.

Mafia; Vongola; those things barely interested him except that joining into the little 'game' gave him more opponents to fight, more prey to hunt. That little group interested him for their contradictions as well – a useless coward who grew strong enough to challenge Hibari himself; a baby with enough strength to stop his strike with one hand; a laughing, carefree idiot whose skill with a sword made Hibari sit up and notice; an unrepentant fanboy of the previous useless coward whose intelligence was actually a merit rather than an annoyance.

It was simply intriguing.

But even that interest would not have lasted long if they were determined to tie him down with them – Hibari could not be tied down to anything; he refused to allow himself to. The baby was clever, however, and offered him the freedom to do whatever he wished.

And so he stayed.

20.

Sex, to Hibari, was something that simply did not cross his mind. The few times it did, the thought had disgusted him.

He could not understand the appeal of having another person so close, so _intimate_ that they could kill him with the barest flick of the wrist while he was unaware or off-guard – he could not even imagine letting his guard down to that point. The physical aspect was what disgusted him the most – it seemed _messy_ and chaotic, all fluids and the exchange of them, and far too much effort for too little gain.

He had never tried it, and had no interest in trying it.

Being in battle gave him a far richer pleasure than any sexual contact could. He would much rather shove a tonfa up against a herbivore's ribs than to bed them. It was far more effective and satisfying.

21.

Everything that Hibari had, everything that he _was_, he had built it up himself, brick by brick. He had created his self and his identity through his own means, and had never accepted a single helping hand the rare few times they had been extended to him.

Hibari Kyouya was the ultimate self-made man, and he would have it no other way.

_End_


End file.
